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Development of Outer Ring Areas (II): Take Precautions to Prevent Risks

There will be more potential risks as the population and urban areas are increasing when we are developing the outer ring areas, so we have to take precautions to prevent risks as early as possible.

1. To prevent irrational soaring of housing price. In view of the experiences of China and other countries, the urbanization is almost accompanied by the boom of the real estate industry. For example, the urbanization of Japan after World War II promoted the rise of real estate for more than 30 successive years: Japanese’s salary rose by 21 times from 1955 to 1989, while the land price in urban areas rose by approximately 54 times, especially in such six major cities as Tokyo where the land price rose by even 128 times. The bubble economy of real estate broke in 1990 and the housing price in Japan thus fell down, which caused a series of financial crises and maintained the economy of Japan in downturn for 15 successive years. China also suffers the soaring housing price in recent years, no matter whether it is a tier-1 city, tier-2 city or tier-3 city. The real estate thus becomes the arena of some speculators. There will be definitely chain reactions if the housing price cannot be controlled and regulated effectively as the development of outer ring areas is approaching, we have been approved to build Liangjiang New Developed Area and Chengdu-Chongqing economic Zone, regional development is accelerating and “conceptions” appear and accumulate. Such reactions will also cause the irrational increase of business cost and living cost and then obstruct Chongqing’s overall striving, transformation and upgrading.

2. To prevent poverty-stricken areas in urban areas. The population agglomeration of rural residents in urban areas should be conditioned by industrial development and increase of jobs. There will be definitely lots of laid-off workers and the poor group and poverty-stricken areas (slum) will appear in urban areas if the population increases sharply in a short time and exceeds the city’s capacity of employment. Chongqing’s industry is almost capital-intensive or technique-intensive and the service industry has not been thoroughly developed. We should first deal with the employment of the newly added 5 million people so as to develop and build the city during the development of outer ring areas.

3. To prevent traffic jams in urban areas. Traffic jams are the most common problem in a metropolis. According to the statistics, among the present 32 metropolises whose population is higher than 1 million, 27 of them have the per capita road area less than 6.6m2, lower than the national average, especially Shanghai where the per capita road area is only 3.5m2, the saturation during peak hours and throughout a day exceeds 95% and 70% respectively on about 50% of the carriageway in the downtown and the average speed of vehicle is only l0km/hour. The traffic pressure in urban areas will increase remarkably as the population of Chongqing will reach 10 million, so it is the key solution to accelerate the construction of urban rapid transit systems featuring rail transit.

4. To prevent increasing contradictions between energy consumption and environment. The great expansion of urban population drives growing demand for and consumption of energy. The primary energy consumed in Chongqing is mainly the coal, accounting for more than 70% of the total consumption, and the consumption even increases year after year: the annual growth is 4.2% between 1978 and 1997 and 8.7% between 1998 and 2008. According to the estimate, the demand for coal will exceed 78 million tons in 2015 throughout the city and the gap is approximately 50%. Meanwhile, the sharp increase of urban residents will also impose great pressure on the urban environment. For example, there was 18,400 tons of domestic waste per day in Beijing in 2008, but the designed treatment capacity was only 10,400 per day. The actual treatment capacity has reached 17,400 tons per day, averagely 67% higher than the designed capacity. The service life of the waste treatment facilities will be shortened by 50%, if they continue such overload operation, and there will be no spare space in Beijing to deposit waste in 5 years. It is inevitable to build the environmentally friendly low-carbon development mode as soon as possible.